Chapter 165: Unaware

“So you can read this?”

“There’s images, repeating shapes and sizes…it is not too hard. It is a collection of love stories.”

“Love stories? Really? Like…what does this say?”

Baba was illiterate, like everyone else. Schools were regularly abandoned. Even if a teacher miraculously appeared to run it and teach them, it wouldn’t last long in charland. They were islands, so to speak, that were very prone to flooding. While not every char was the same, with some allegedly being quite safe, theirs was not.

Here, over eighty percent of people were poor. Here, it was devastation after devastation. Death after death. Husbands and the young would regularly leave their families in pursuit of a greater life. Blaming them had gotten exhausting.

Why stay? Beyond the fact that it was their home, the simple reality was that they couldn’t. There were no maps telling them where to go. Where was the closest settlement? Where were the cities? They had a vague idea but vague ideas weren’t enough. They needed concrete directions. Otherwise, they would starve, a death regarded by the people as the worst of the worst. A torturous pain like nothing else.

That was why the blame towards those that ran was exhausting. The runners knew just as little as the abandoned.

Life wasn’t hard. Life just was.

“Why am I being shown this?”

Adult Kazi’s question was but an insignificant tremor in the waters. His eyes darkened at the sight of his younger self reading to his father. At the time, he didn’t care. His world was devoid of life and his first four years of life reflected that sense of lifelessness. He sat there, cuddled with his father, reading to the man who had never once read in his life.

“Give me a second.” Baba got up, gently pushing the young Kazi off his lap. Leaning on the walls, water drenched his butt. Baba returned with a small yet fully intact book in hand. Young Kazi had seen it before and didn’t utter a word. Adult Kazi frowned.

“It’s the Quran,” Baba said. “I’ve always wanted to read it.”

Upon opening it, young Kazi immediately came to a conclusion. “It’s in a different pattern, Baba.”

“Oh.”

Baba’s face fell. He sat there with his son, awkward, before Kazi said, “I can try.”

From then on, father’s excitement grew. Once a week, Kazi would read him his findings and theories. Looking back, he was approximately eighty-four percent correct in his translations. Some details and nuances had been lost to him.

“He knows how to read the Quran!”

“Really?”

“Yes! Do you remember that verse from old Abdur? I barely remember but you do. See if he’s correct.”

Word spread fast about his ability to read, comprehend, and deduce patterns. Everyone suddenly wanted to talk to him, it was overwhelming. Turning five, he was forced to remember the faces and names of every villager, of every man, woman, and child. It didn’t occur to anyone just how adept the young boy was at not only remembering their nicknames and real names, but their personalities too.

Seeing his younger self, he remembered how easy everything was for him.

The world went blurry again. He was back home—a different home—where the structure was slightly stronger and larger. His breath hitched. He was playing with the pots and pans. His grandmother was sitting on a chair that he had made.

“You’re really showing me this,” the older Kazi muttered under his breath.

The sky was dark and his parents were gone for the night. He vividly recalled them needing to help a neighbour, and thus, they turned to his father’s mother to watch over him. She was old, born in the early 1900s. Her memory was failing her with every passing day.

Despite that, she watched him with a tender smile.

“Dadi…” Adult Kazi approached her and tried to move the wisp of white hair on her eye. “Your eyes are still so pretty.”

He had inherited his beautiful hazel eyes from her. Not his father, not his mother—his Dadi. He wondered what she was like when she was young. She lived a life before this. She laughed, she played games, she had parents of her own, and she married a loving husband with a big smile on her face. She was alive.

Now, she was reduced to this. Still pretty, still kind, still loving, but a shell of what she was. She was forgetting all the joy in her life, all the people she had met. Sometimes, Kazi asked how Allah could be so cruel.

Her fingers tightly gripped the arm rails and she pushed herself up. His brows softened. She was much smaller than he remembered.

Her steps were slow and meek. Her long white hair and her body was modestly covered in a long white saree with a blouse underneath.

Then there was Kazi, wearing nothing but a dhoti. Little Kazi Hossain, inspecting the pots and pans, licking it to find what it was made of. Rocks? Metal? Wood? Brick? What was it made from, he asked. He didn’t want help—he wanted to figure it out. He wanted to solve the puzzle.

He didn’t pay attention to his surroundings. He didn’t pay attention to his grandmother who went to pick up the heavy bucket of water and pour it into a glass for him. He didn’t hear her walking towards him. He didn’t hear her falling.

Little Kazi didn’t see it, but adult Kazi did.

It was a misstep, a fateful stumble, and Kazi’s grandmother tripped, spilling the jug of water she had been carrying. In the brief moment that followed, her skull bashed into the ground. She was barely able to let out a gasp before her life ended. Eighty years of life ended because she wanted to help him.

His heart squeezed when he saw the puddle of blood.

He remembered seeing the blood. He remembered cleaning it up. He remembered thinking how proud she would be of him. He remembered going to get the pots to bang together to wake her up. To make some noise to surprise her awake.

Little Kazi turned, blinking. The broken cup caught his attention first, then the fallen old woman. He approached his grandmother, who now lay still on the ground. A pool of water mingled with something darker, and Kazi’s gaze fixated on the blood seeping from a small wound on her forehead.

It was exactly as he remembered it. The clean-up, the banging pots, and the lack of awareness towards death.

He loved Dadi. She told him stories of her old life whenever she could. She was interesting to him because she stimulated his brain in ways the other adults refused to. She treated him like a child and he could feel it. Seeing his younger self fetch a cloth to clean the spilled water and blood, mimicking the way his grandmother would tidy up after a spill, he kept himself still. For the first time in his memories, pride crossed the boy’s features. He believed that he was doing something good, something that would make his grandmother proud.

It wasn’t until his mother came in and shrieked that the boy realized something was very wrong. His father followed shortly afterwards and froze at the sight. “Maa…?”

Kazi had seen death, but he had never stopped to ask what it was. People disappeared. That was what he was told. That was what was normal. Little Kazi blinked innocently, oblivious until he saw the fear in his parents’ eyes.

Little Kazi understood, ’Ah, I won’t ever be able to talk to her again.’

Kazi didn’t know what death was until then. At four and a half years old, Kazi Hossain understood that even those closest to him would inevitably die.

It was also the last time he ever let himself be unaware of his surroundings.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep